


Hollow You Out

by sinaddict



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-04
Updated: 2005-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 22:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinaddict/pseuds/sinaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan does not want to be at Tri-City Hospital at eleven-thirty on a Friday night. Veronica hates everything about hospitals. And Duncan wants to go home and take a sleeping pill to forget the whole damn mess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hollow You Out

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 'An Echolls Family Christmas.'

_[she was full of the potential that he was bent to excavate]_

Logan does not want to be at Tri-City Hospital at eleven-thirty on a Friday night.

Logan does not want to be at Tri-City Hospital, period. But mostly, Logan does not want to be sitting in the waiting room next to Veronica Mars in awkward silence with his (weak, pathetic) head in his hands while her hand hovers over his back hesitantly.

The cops were off somewhere else talking to his mother, who even in shock and grief managed to charm them all into leaving Logan be for a little while and bother her instead. For all her faults, sometimes Logan thinks his mother really does try her best to help him (but not against his father) when he needs it.

Veronica withdraws her hand before it touches him, draws it back to her side, and he knows this without having to look at her. He tells himself that the only reason he's letting her stay there in the first place is because she's being (not herself) quiet and not trying to get him to talk about his feelings or some other bullshit like everybody else.

After a few more moments of silence, she gets up and leaves as quietly as she came in, and he tells himself that it doesn't matter because she's Veronica-fucking-Mars and he's glad to be rid of her.

Except that he isn't.

And he hates sitting here alone.

Which is why he doesn't tell her to get lost when she comes back in two minutes later. Why he doesn't make some stinging comment about her infecting him with some contagious disease when she puts one warm hand on his knee, and he can feel the heat of her skin through his pants because she's hot like Lilly was hot, burning up from the inside with fire for everything around her.

Of all the things he loved about Lilly, he loved the way she burned the most.

He doesn't let himself react to Veronica. He tells himself that he still fucking hates her, but she's there and she's silent and she's not being herself, -- maybe she's almost being Lilly instead -- so it's a little okay to let her touch give him the slightest comfort because his father could be dying.

_And he doesn't really want his father to die. But yeah, he really does, but no he kinda doesn't, but yeah he kinda does..._

He thinks he wouldn't really care if his father did die (_maybe he would, but no he wouldn't, but maybe he would_), except 'die' is a word that makes him think of Lilly -- god, she'd hate that -- and Lilly's the hollow in the pit of his stomach that's never really gone away.

And he doesn't know if he can take more hollow.

~

Veronica hates hospitals. Everything about hospitals.

She hates the smell of ammonia and the dingy tile floors and the neon fluorescent lighting and all the overwhelming _politeness_ from nurses, like having someone tell you that everything's going to be okay in a plastic voice is going to make you feel better about someone you love being stitched up in the next room.

But right now, she mostly hates that she's sitting here with her hand on Logan's leg and not the slightest clue what to say to him to help. Which in itself is a hundred kinds of weird, because he's Logan the psychotic jackass, and she shouldn't give a damn that he's sitting there with his head in his hands like his whole world is crashing down around him.

But he looks just like he did the night she had to tell him about Lilly; (Lilly, Lilly, _Lilly..._) her brain sticks like a CD skipping, and she finds herself actually shaking her head to clear it.

Lilly's the scratch on her brain that catches every time.

Logan looks... not like Logan. He's not crying, but Veronica has only ever seen him cry for Lilly. He cries for his friends, but not his family, and if she let herself think about it, she's sure she might come to some (amazingly stupid) conclusion that it says something positive about his character.

Except that he's Logan, so he has no character to begin with.

And he's still not saying anything, still sitting there looking like his world has crashed down around him (and maybe it has), but she can't think of a damn thing to say to him that wouldn't sound like a cheesy Lifetime movie. She thinks Logan would probably laugh at her if she tried to convince him that everything was going to be okay or something like that. But she tells herself that's okay, because she's already done the only thing she can think of that might actually be of any help to him.

She called Duncan.

And she even managed to sort of convince herself it didn't matter that she still has his phone number memorized and could dial it as easily as her own. Duncan doesn't matter anymore, she tells herself, even though she still dreams about the way his mouth felt on her neck as his fingers unbuttoned her shirt, but NO, it's SO beyond wrong to dream about him now.

She's leaving as soon as he comes to deal with Logan.

~

Duncan brings a bottle of Stoly with him to the hospital. When he's actually getting drunk and not just pretending, he prefers whiskey, but Logan's always been a vodka man, and since they're drowning Logan's sorrows tonight, he'll stick with what Logan likes.

Veronica looks at him like he's twelve kinds of unhelpful when she spies the bottle.

Logan just reaches out and takes it from him without bothering to ask if he brought glasses to drink it from -- which he didn't, of course, because they never bothered with glasses when the aim was to get wasted as fast as possible. Logan's gulping vodka like water (and he still doesn't know how Logan can do that), and Veronica's looking between them disapprovingly, and Duncan wants to go home and take a sleeping pill and not think about this whole damn mess, but none of them move.

Finally, Logan breaks the tense silence (maybe it was only tense to Duncan, but tense was tense and he didn't need anymore god damn stress in his life) and stands, a fifth of vodka dangling between his fingers at his side as he looks at Duncan blankly. "Let's go."

Duncan merely nods and takes his keys out of his pocket, but Logan shocks the hell out of him by glancing dismissively at Veronica and telling them both, "Ronnie's driving. She never wants to have fun, anyway."

Veronica's expression goes from surprised to annoyed in three seconds flat, but Logan's already halfway out the door without bothering to stick around for an argument from her, which Duncan figures she probably won't give since they all know she doesn't like drinking, anyway.

She looks at him and says, "Weevil drove me."

He ignores the resentment and tosses her his car keys before following Logan, because fuck knows why, but Logan wants her with them tonight and he won't deny Logan what he wants right now. Logan never denied him anything at times like this. He doesn't bother to look back and see if Veronica is following them -- she will, of course, because she's still Veronica, not _his Veronica_ anymore, but still Veronica -- and Logan's taking pulls from the bottle every six fucking steps.

And Duncan wants to go home and take a sleeping pill and forget this whole damn mess.

~

_[can you come in any closer? i'm gonna hollow you out]_

Logan's in the backseat with their version of comfort because Veronica says she doesn't want the sheriff's department pulling her over for driving with open containers of alcohol in the car. Duncan thinks that's just Veronica's excuse for wanting Logan and his smartass drunken attitude as far away from her as she can get it in a car.

Veronica turns up the volume on the stereo to drown out Logan with a smirk that means trouble, and Duncan briefly wonders what she could do since this was his car, but he really should have known better because she's Veronica and she manages to accomplish the impossible every other day.

The first words of the song are, "poor little rich boy."

And it all went downhill from there.

~

After she died, people started to revise Lilly like she wasn't a real human being anymore; suddenly people were all, "Lilly was a wonderful young woman full of promise," and "Lilly embodied service and commitment to her community," when the only thing Lilly regularly serviced was Logan.

In her more morbid moments, Veronica wonders what they would have said about her if she'd died instead. She didn't have to die for people to revise her, though. They do it with her standing twenty feet away. _You should hear what people say about you..._

_Things I heard about you, you must really like to lay the pipe right, huh?_

She wonders if they'd still say those things about her if she was dead. Probably not, she decides bittersweetly. Lilly would've made them regret it if they even tried. She'd probably be that dead girl who Duncan Kane used to date, or that dead girl that used to hang around Lilly Kane, but not Veronica Mars, because the Veronica before Lilly died wasn't really Veronica at all.

Veronica before Lilly died was just a shorter way of saying, "Duncan's girlfriend," or "Lilly's best friend," or "the Sheriff's daughter". Veronica before Lilly died was that girl who was always somebody else's something, always defined by the people around her because she had no definition of herself.

Veronica after Lilly died is a big "fuck you" to the universe.

And she likes it that way.

At least, that's what she told herself before she ended up sitting on the floor of Logan's pool house between her drunk ex-boyfriend (_and maybe bro--no, she wouldn't even go there_) -- who was reciting the alphabet just to prove to her that he could, in fact, remember it -- and his equally drunk best friend, who was assuring her that Duncan could drink more since he wasn't singing yet.

And sadly, this was the most active her social life had been in months.

Logan and Duncan had finished off the vodka early, but unsurprisingly, Logan had a well-stocked liquor cabinet at his disposal, and Duncan was downing Southern Comfort almost as fast as Logan was going through shots of something Veronica couldn't quite identify, and didn't really want to.

But she has to admit, they're both easier to deal with drunk than they are sober. And they're kind of chatty (at least with each other), which she may find a way to work to her advantage. If she figures out why she's sticking around when she clearly has no reason to.

Duncan gets to 'N' before he stumbles and looks over at Logan, who helpfully prompts him , "O?" And Veronica rolls her eyes because they're both morons, but they're almost (kind of, sort of, but not really) cute like this. "U, V, W," Duncan stops, looking over at Logan again. "Uh?"

"X."

"X! Y, and Z!" Duncan gives her a dopey, proud smile that should _not_ make her warm down to her toes with happiness. "Now, I know my ABC's--"

"Alright," Logan cuts him off and grabs the bottle out of his hand before flopping back down, and he doesn't seem to notice that his head landed on Veronica's thigh, and she's trying to decide whether to smack him or just let him be since he's not acting like an asshole. "Singing," he shakes a finger at Duncan, although from his point of view Duncan would be upside-down. "Now you've had enough."

Duncan pouts, but collapses next to her, close enough that his arm is brushing against hers, and she tells herself that it's no big deal that it still makes her tingle to have him touching her. "You're just jealous that I'm a better singer than you," Duncan tells Logan, who snorts at him and drinks straight from Duncan's bottle of Southern Comfort in response before directing a trademark Logan smartass comment back at him.

And the way Logan and Duncan are teasing each other, it's almost like they've forgotten Veronica's still there, which, she guesses, they might have since they're both so drunk that Logan might think she's just a body-sized pillow that's apparently comfy to rest on.

She tells herself it's no big deal that sitting here with them makes her feel like she's finally back where she belongs, because she doesn't belong to them anymore.

And she tells herself she doesn't want to.

~

Sometime between Duncan's arm going around Veronica's shoulders and Logan's head on her lap, Logan decides that he's not drunk. At least, not according to his definition. If he can still remember why he started drinking in the first place, he's not drunk. He does, however, figure he's pleasantly buzzed enough to think that inviting (demanding) Veronica's presence turned out to be a good idea.

He figures it might also be because she's stroking her fingers through his hair the way Lilly used to, and it feels so fucking good that Logan can almost ignore why he's drinking to drown his problems.

"Veronica, can I ask you something?" Duncan asks, and Logan looks up to find that Duncan's playing with her hair the same way she's playing with his. Her eyes are closed, but she murmurs something that sounds like an okay.

And for just an instant, Logan finds himself looking at Duncan, silently asking him not to let either of them screw this up because it feels so right to be together again, even though it's really not and they hate each other.

"Where'd you learn to play poker?"

Veronica slowly opens her eyes, looking up at the ceiling rather than looking at either of them, and Logan suddenly _knows_ exactly where she learned to play poker because it was so damn obvious he should have seen it the instant she shuffled the cards from the order of the movements she used. "Lilly taught you."

She looks down at him, her gaze catching his, and there's something there he can't figure out but he understands as completely as anything he's ever known when she nods. He watches Duncan's fingers tangle in her hair, feels her own mimic the movement against his scalp, and they're all quiet because thinking about Lilly makes them quiet.

Which is a little wrong. Lilly hated quiet and she'd hate her memory making them so.

Logan smirks up at Veronica to break the silence, and for an instant her eyes flicker like she's expecting something awful from him -- and really, she has good reason to expect him to be an asshole to her -- so he lets his smirk fade to the cocky grin Lilly used to tell him was sexy as hell. "You know that we let you win, right?"

Her fingers are still in his hair, and Duncan's are still in hers, and the only thing that's missing to make this all perfect and normal and fucking golden again would be Lilly sprawled next to them with her head on his chest so he could play with her hair, too.

Veronica's eyes flicker again, and Duncan's looking back and forth between them cautiously like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop and everything to go back to them (normal) hating each other. She finally shakes her head and rolls her eyes at him, throwing a smirk back at him as she says, "Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that."

~

_[she whispered the one and only thing i believe to be true]_

Duncan waits until Logan falls asleep to convince himself that just talking to Veronica again couldn't really hurt anything. (_Except that he knows it can because she's not his Veronica anymore and she's so touchy that he never knows what the wrong thing to say to her is._) But she's still absently stroking Logan's hair and letting him sleep with his head on her lap, and Duncan remembers being in that position with her, the way everything felt warm and safe and whole.

Nothing's felt like that since Lilly died.

"Thank you."

Her eyes open swiftly, and her forehead wrinkles in that cute Veronica way he misses, and she asks, "For what?"

"For this," he tells her, looking down at Logan briefly, and he can't remember the last time he saw Logan look so at peace. Even when he's drunk, Logan is on guard for anything that might come at him, but now he's out cold and resting and not trying to be tough about all the shit he has to deal with that not even Duncan can help him with all the time. "For calling me about him."

She shrugs like it wasn't any big deal. "He needed you."

The silence between them is a little awkward, a little uncomfortable, at least for him because he doesn't know how to talk to her anymore. Back when they were dating, there was nobody easier to talk to than Veronica, but now she's more remote, more cold, and he hates that he played a part in making her that way.

Her hair is still soft and silky under his fingers, and the fact she's letting him play with it at all surprises him, but he won't question it, won't do anything that might disrupt this weird little peaceable truce between the three of them.

_Maybe this is just another dream and he'll wake up alone._

He wants to kiss her again, like he used to, like he would have if they were still together and Lilly was sleeping next to Logan. Instead, he tells her, "You should get some sleep, too."

And when she looks at him with that Veronica look again and lays her head on his shoulder, he thinks it's probably not just the liquor that's making everything feel right again.

He's awake long after she falls asleep, staring at the lights on the Christmas tree in the far corner of the room until his eyes blur and he's just seeing dots of colored light on a dark background as the heater buzzes in the background, and Logan's snoring softly and Veronica's murmuring nonsense in her sleep.

And he doesn't want to close his eyes ever again or he'll lose this.

~

Logan can't remember the last time he slept without dreaming, but when he blinks open his eyes, he finds his arm tucked underneath Veronica's legs, his fingers curled around her thigh. The mere fact she isn't screaming at him about it leads him to the conclusion that she's sleeping, but when he rolls over onto his back, he finds Duncan staring vacantly at the Christmas tree, his fingers still stroking through Veronica's hair as she sleeps on his shoulder.

"Duncan?" he asks quietly, and Duncan's gaze snaps over to him quickly. "Usually you pass out before I do."

"I didn't have as much to drink as you did," Duncan's voice is barely above a whisper, and Logan wants to believe the only reason he's following Duncan's lead and trying not to wake Veronica up is because she makes a good pillow and his head was starting to pound. "You should get some more sleep while you can."

They're both dancing around the obvious here, and Logan hates that. It's a game he's had to play too often with his parents and the 09'er crowd that follows them. "I still hate her," he tells Duncan, and for an instant, he sees that old anger in Duncan's eyes, because no matter what everyone else says, Duncan has always had a soft spot for Veronica and there's always been a limit to the shit he'll listen to about her. It's why nobody dares to say anything about her to him.

Except Logan.

"Yeah, you hate her enough to demand she come home with us," Duncan's voice is dripping with sarcasm. "Just admit it, man. You don't hate her anymore."

Logan glares at him, but grudgingly concedes. "Okay, I don't hate her. But she annoys the hell out of me."

"Which is why you're sleeping on her lap," Duncan nods, narrowing his eyes suddenly. "And get your hand off her thigh."

It's that sheer male pissing contest instinct that makes Logan grin at him cockily -- Duncan may be his best friend, but he still has to make the most of any opportunity to tease him -- and he moves his hand just a little bit higher.

"If you wanna keep that hand, move it," Veronica grumbles at him without opening her eyes. And Logan's just starting to grin when she adds sleepily, "Tell Lilly. She'll kick your ass."

"She's asleep," Duncan says, as if Logan couldn't figure that one out on his own, and Logan moves his hand without further comment. Lilly's name made it all silent again, and Duncan tells him softly, "She's been talking for the last hour or so. She's not making a lot of sense, though."

Logan doesn't want to know that Veronica talks in her sleep. It's too personal, and he doesn't need to know anything that personal about Veronica Mars. Then a thought occurs to him. "I don't talk, do I?"

"I wish you did," Duncan rolls his eyes and subtly shifts, careful not to move Veronica too much and wake her up, and it was almost like watching them Homecoming night in the limo when she fell asleep in his arms and Duncan was perfectly content to sit there and hold her for hours. "It would help drown out your snoring."

"Yeah, you're one to talk."

~

When Veronica first opens her eyes, she finds herself looking up at Duncan's peaceful, sleeping face and thinks, 'Oh, good. Another Duncan dream. This is REAL normal.' But since it's a dream, she figures what the hell, and stretches up to brush her lips over his, and his lips are soft and warm and all the things she remembers (_bad_) and misses (_wrong_).

Then she registers the fact there's another pair of arms around her, and she barely tampers down the urge to scream before she remembers the previous night and realizes that somewhere in the middle of the night, Logan moved from using her lap as a pillow to using the back of her shoulder instead.

Duncan's still sleeping, and as far as she can tell, Logan is too, and for just a split-second, she lets herself think, god, this was the most comfortable she's been in months. Then she comes to her senses and realizes she really has to leave since it's late and she didn't call her father and he was going to ground her forever for this one.

But Duncan's fingers are tangled in her hair, and Logan's arms are wrapped around her so tightly that she thinks he must be dreaming of Lilly, and when did her hand fall to rest on Duncan's stomach?

And even though it feels right and safe and the opposite of what she should feel around them, she has to go before they wake up and it's morning and this becomes _real_ or more real than it really is now.

It hurts a little to disentangle herself from their arms. It hurts more to look down at them sleeping peacefully and know that tomorrow they'd probably be back to Logan insulting her for the hell of it and Duncan pulling his hot and cold routine and her pretending she didn't give a damn about either of them.

It hurts most to know that Lilly should've been here for this.

_Lilly, Lilly, Lilly..._ her brain skips again.

She shouldn't have stayed with them.

And she feels a little hollow in the pit of her stomach as she leaves.


End file.
